This blog offers resources for 2016 LDS Gospel Doctrine teachers and students, focusing on the context of the scriptures, including geography and historicity. Much of the material comes from these books: Moroni's America, The Lost City of Zarahemla, Brought to Light, and Letter VII: Oliver Cowdery's Message to the World about the Hill Cumorah.

The revealed text

The light of revelation at the Whitmer farm where Joseph and Oliver worked upstairs to finish translating the Book of Mormon

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Lesson 8: O How Great the Goodness of Our God

At first glance, you might think that 2 Nephi 9-10 has nothing to do with Book of Mormon geography, right? The lesson rightly focuses on the Savior's Atonement. No need for supplemental materials on that topic.

Here are some things to consider.

2 Nephi 9:41 says "the way for man is narrow." Compare that to other passages in the text that refer to narrow places, such as a narrow strip of wilderness, a narrow neck, a narrow neck of land, etc. Then consider various proposed maps of Book of Mormon geography and see how they interpret the term "narrow." The obvious anomaly is a "narrow neck of land" that is over 100 miles wide.

2 Nephi 9:53 says, "he has promised unto us that our seed shall not utterly be destroyed, according to the flesh, but that he would preserve them; and in future generations they shall become a righteous branch unto the house of Israel." Where do the scriptures say the descendants of Lehi live? Hint: See D&C 28, 30 and 32.

What land qualifies as the fulfillment of the following prophecy?

2 Nephi 10:10 But behold, this land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land.

11 And this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land, who shall raise up unto the Gentiles.

12 And I will fortify this land against all other nations.

_________________________

Last week I said I'd discuss 2 Nephi 5 later. Here are some of the main points, taken from chapter 11 of Moroni's America:

the Lord did warn me, that I, Nephi, should depart from them and
flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me. Wherefore, I,
Nephi, did take my family, and … all those who would go with me… And we
did … journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had
journeyed for the space of many days we did pitch our tents. (2 Nephi 5:5-7)

These verses don’t tell us much about where Nephi went,
other than “into the wilderness.” He gives no directions or specific distances.

However, he gives an interesting clue. It was only after “we had journeyed for the space of
many days” that “we did pitch our tents.” This seems surprising. Nephi
specified that they took their tents with them. Why did they wait until after
they had journeyed for many days to pitch them?

One possibility is that the tents were semi-permanent; i.e.,
not the kind of thing they would set up for one night’s sleep. Maybe the tents
were big and complex and would take a long time to set up or take down. Another
possibility is that they were on the run from the Lamanites and could not stop,
but that seems unlikely over “many days.”

A third possibility that I find persuasive is that they were
traveling by boat and simply stayed on the boats until they reached their
destination.

It is common knowledge that ancient people tended to travel
on or along rivers and waterways. This is particularly true where vegetation is
dense and only the rivers offer a clear pathway. Rivers have the added
advantage of a definite location. You can navigate them easily, provided you
don’t get lost by following the wrong tributary.

The people in Nephi’s group would have been familiar with
boats; after all, Nephi had built the ship on which they had all crossed the
ocean, and indigenous people were familiar with the rivers. Although Sidon is the only river named in the text, other
rivers are mentioned. Mormon explains that his work could not contain even “a
hundredth part of the proceedings of this people… and their shipping and their
building of ships.” (Helaman 3:14) It seems unlikely that all of this activity
took place on one river, and only after hundreds of years of history (the time
period which Helaman covers).

Taking these factors into consideration, it would be surprising
if Nephi and his people did not use
boats to travel through the wilderness in the new world, particularly after he
had been warned to put distance between him and his brothers. Dense vegetation
covers Georgia and Alabama. Had he hacked a trail through the forest, his
brothers could easily follow.

With these assumptions, I looked at maps to see what routes
Nephi could have taken for his escape. Later in the
text we learn that Nephi ascended to a higher elevation; the City of Nephi is
always up from the place of their fathers’ first inheritance. The highest
locations in the area are in the Appalachian Mountains, such as in eastern
Tennessee.

I found a river that leads from the coast to the mountains, which I consider a plausible
candidate for Nephi’s route to the land of Nephi.

Figure 15 is a proposed map with rivers displayed in white.
The arrows depict Nephi’s route.

Once he had established his people in the new area, Nephi reflected on what had happened.

Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he
spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto
thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord…. For
behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like
unto a flint. (2 Nephi 5:20-21)

Hearts like flint.
This is a surprising metaphor. Something must have triggered Nephi to compare his brothers’ hearts to flint. No
other scriptural passage makes this analogy (Later, Jacob quotes Isaiah, who
uses flint in two passages, but neither of these relate to Nephi’s metaphor. See
2 Nephi 7:7 and 15:28).

What made Nephi think of flint?

It turns out that the river in Georgia that I propose Nephi followed is named Flint River. The name comes from the abundance of flint in that
riverbed, a source that has supplied Native Americans in the region for hundreds
of years. Of course I’m not saying Nephi named this river, but had Nephi
followed any other riverbed in the area, he may not have come across an
abundance of high-quality flint and would have thought up a different metaphor
to describe his brothers.

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This blog uses the 2016 Gospel Doctrine lessons to look at the Book of Mormon from a faithful perspective, based on a careful analysis of the text and real-world settings. I'm particularly interested in what the text has to say about the location of Book of Mormon events and other aspects of historicity.

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